The Creation
The Creation were an English mod-turned-psychedelic band — singer Kenny Pickett and guitarist Eddie Phillips chief among them — who emerged from the Hertfordshire beat group the Mark Four in 1966. Loud and art-conscious, and built around Phillips's violin-bow guitar technique (borrowed a year later by Jimmy Page), their brief catalog, including ‘Making Time’ and ‘Painter Man,’ outsized their commercial run and left a mark on bands from Led Zeppelin to Oasis.
Phillips named Chuck Berry directly as one of the formative sounds that hit him as a teenager in the mid-1950s, before he ever picked up a guitar bow — the riff-driven backbone of early rock and roll that underlies the Creation's guitar attack.
listen forListen for the chugging, riff-based rhythm guitar under ‘Making Time’ — the same duckwalk-era drive Berry pioneered, sped up and roughened for a mid-60s mod audience.
Guitarist Eddie Phillips toured with Little Richard in the early 1960s and spoke of the experience in awed terms; that raw, shrieking rock and roll energy fed directly into the Creation's loud, aggressive live sound.
listen forListen for the same unhinged vocal intensity and driving backbeat in the Creation's own uptempo material — a direct line from Little Richard's stage presence to the band Phillips built.
Phillips singled out seeing Buddy Holly perform live as one of the best nights of his life, part of the wave of late-1950s rock and roll that shaped his sense of songcraft before the Creation's more experimental turn.
listen forListen for the tight, hook-driven verse-chorus structure under the Creation's fuzz and bowed-guitar textures — a pop songwriting instinct descended from Holly's economical singles.